The present invention is directed towards providing a framework for migrating software applications to a grid computing environment. More particularly, the present invention provides a system and method for assessing the performance of legacy applications migrated to a grid infrastructure by analyzing the legacy application and running the analyzed legacy application on a grid simulator in a format acceptable to the grid simulator.
Grid computing aims at maximizing the use of available processing resources for applications having intensive computing requirements. The use of grid computing for solving large scale computational problems by using the resources of a plurality of heterogeneous computer systems connected by a network (such as the Internet) is becoming more prevalent. In order for an enterprise to successfully adopt a grid computing environment it is critical to migrate legacy enterprise applications (i.e. antiquated applications that have been inherited from languages, platforms, and techniques older than current technology) to a grid infrastructure. Legacy applications such as analytical applications (trading, risk calculations, Monte Carlo simulations), backend batch applications (actuarial, billing, customer relationship management (CRM)), and applications dealing with huge data (business intelligence, data mining, pattern matching) are being seen as prime candidates for grid deployment in order to obtain high performance and throughput.
Migrating legacy applications to a grid computing environment remains a challenging proposition for software professionals. The several challenges faced by software professionals while migrating legacy applications to a grid infrastructure include incorporating seamless integration of various security policies and controls in the grid and managing the heterogeneous and complex grid infrastructure efficiently. Migration of a legacy application typically involves re-engineering of the application code which in turn involves significant investments in terms of domain knowledge and specialists' judgments on application analysis and re-engineering. Further, the performance gain obtainable after migration is not predictable. Hence, enterprises are reluctant in investing money and resources for migrating legacy applications without being certain of any performance benefit.
It is essential that a legacy application is analyzed for determining an estimate of the amount of performance benefit obtainable on migrating the application to a grid infrastructure before the application code is re-engineered. Such an analysis provides enterprises with a tool for understanding the benefits of migration. Enterprise legacy applications comprise complexities in terms of data, module, and temporal dependencies among various modules of the application. When a legacy application is migrated to a grid environment, there is a need to analyze the application for parallelization while maintaining dependencies in order to ensure performance benefit on distributing the application across the grid.
Consequently, there is need for a system and a method for analyzing the performance of legacy applications running in a grid environment. A comparative analysis between performances of a legacy application before and after migration to a grid infrastructure would enable enterprises to take an informed decision regarding migration to a grid infrastructure. Further the analysis of legacy applications would also provide inputs for any re-engineering of the applications that may have to be performed for the purpose of migration.